


Merry Little Lies

by Amand_r



Category: Torchwood RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-03
Updated: 2011-05-03
Packaged: 2017-10-18 22:49:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/194148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amand_r/pseuds/Amand_r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's one of those things, an accident, really, that became a lie, and then the lie became too difficult to back out of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Merry Little Lies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cruentum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruentum/gifts).



> for cruentum. ♥ xiao di di. Thanks to 51stcenturyfox for the beta tinsel!

_And so I lie with you, and you with me,  
And in our faults by lies we flattered be._  
(Shakespeare, Sonnet 138)

Every year for Christmas, Marion buys them new house slippers. They are always very nice slippers—well made, lined with fleece or flannel—one year John got blue ones with rhinestones on them, but for the most part, manly slippers, the kind any guy, gay or straight, wouldn't mind owning.

The hitch is that neither John nor Scott actually _wears_ slippers.

It's one of those things, an accident, really, that became a lie, and then the lie became too difficult to back out of. They'd not really worn the slippers, just for a few days after Christmas whilst John's parents were about before tossing them in the closet and forgetting. Then Lewis had found them and gone through both pairs in an afternoon of spite at being left alone. A month later, Marion had visited and tutted over their sorry eviscerated appearance, and sure enough, that Christmas there had been two new pairs under the tree.

It was as if the hole had dug itself. The next year had seen the mangling of the slippers in a bit of closet water damage, and once again, new ones appeared at the holidays. There didn't ever seem to be a good time to graciously say, 'Oh, by the by, we don't wear slippers.' Instead, they just made sure that the slippers were appropriately mangled or better yet, mysteriously gone. There was, 'Oh no we lost them in the move', and 'Stolen by a bad houseguest', and the old standby, 'Eaten by the new dog' (Poor Harris! Blamed for things not his fault! Scott gave him extra kibble that night just because.). But in the end, there's only so much they can do, and they usually find themselves wearing the slippers for the first few days that John's parents are here for the holidays, slippers that should—for verisimilitude—look shabby.

Every year, Scott tells John that in retrospect they should have just told the truth, that _this year_ they will tell the truth.

Despite that proclamation, after an exhausting day, they are curled up on the sofa, eating shite prawn crisps and discussing where they're all going to eat after John's parents get in, and they all fetch Clare from the train station, and John suddenly slaps Scott's arm and says, "The slippers."

Scott groans. "Fuck. Right."

Five minutes later, they're out back, beating, stabbing, bending, singeing the slippers, trying to put a year's worth of wear into them in ten minutes. John snaps the hard rubber sole of one, drags it top down through the dog run, and then throws it into the water under the pool cover.

"You're going to have to fish that out," Scott says. He's got both of his slippers on the gas grill, and they're becoming gooey. Just a little. Once they're toasted, he'll drench them in liquid beef boullion, serve them to CJ, and Bob'll be your uncle.

John beats the second shoe off the garden wall. "Yeah whatever. I'm putting mine in the dryer. Woo!" He throws the shoe like a hatchet out over the sand and onto the rocks of the beach. Scott shakes his head and turns off the grill; John's methods are all _Sturm und Drang_ , but little results.

CJ scents the boullion and does his 'John on a pogo stick' routine until Scott offers him a grilled shoe. "Al dente," he whispers, and watches with satisfaction as Harris gets in on it with the other shoe, playing tug of war with Charlie. By morning they'll be sufficiently wrecked, and he can pop them in the wash with the towels.

John scrambles over the fence and down to the beach, presumably to look for his aerial footwear, and Scott hears him cursing as he trips down the slope.

"Get a torch," he calls back at the house, "I can't see shit." Of course.

They spend fifteen minutes in the dark, searching for John's errant slipper. What had looked like a simple straight shot right down the beach has apparently been a curveball in the dark, and Scott wonders if he didn't manage to get it all the way in the water. Impossible. He's about to declare it a lost cause, so he sits down on the rock ledge and watches John sweep the ground with his torch, grumbling and stepping gingerly in his bare feet.

"You know what would be useful right about now?" Scott jokes. "Some slippers."

"Ha ha. Shut up."

"Why do we do this?" he asks then, shrugging. Behind him, CJ yelps and he knows that one of the other dogs has claimed his slipper. Ah, the rule of the jungle. "We shouldn't lie to her."

"You think she doesn't know?" John returns, bringing the torch round to blind Scott before shining it on his chin and making a face. "She's always known."

"Then why—"

"Tradition, laddy buck," John says, raising his arms to the sky and doing his best Fiddler impression. "Tradition!" Slipperquest is forgotten, and his accent is rough and thick, laughing gravel or sandpaper.

Scott throws a clump of seaweed at him. "Shut up." He's not actually angry, more miffed that hadn't figured it out himself. John tiptoes through the sand and sits next to him, and they shiver in their bare feet. They should be going in. John can't afford to get sick. Literally. Illness is money with his line of work.

Still. The water crashes on the beach, and they watch the far away lights across the channel to the left. Scott thinks about the virtues of the slippers they never use, especially as he cannot feel his right foot.

John shines the light on his chin again. "And then they heard a scraping noise on the roof of the car—"

Scott hits his shoulder. "Worst story ever."

John puts the whole head of the torch in his mouth and his cheeks bloom red with the light. When he pulls it out with an audible pop, he smiles. "In my version, he has a hook penis instead of a hand."

Scott shudders. "That is definitely a horror story."

John swings the light around in the air until Scott snags it and waves it in a few circles, and they make techno rave dance noises; John makes a box of his hands around his mouth and proceeds to prove how white he is.

They have a few laughs that peter off into comfortable married silence, the dogs yowling for them to return, the waves and the wind rustling the thin shrubs by the public walkway. John hooks his fingers in Scott's and they squeeze, a quiet signal of something they've never had to say out loud.

Scott thinks about the schedule tomorrow: John and panto, picking up fam at the station, a dental checkup for CJ, a grocery delivery from hell. He tries to think of a time in which this would have seemed insane, his life, and it's so distant in the past that he would need to read about it in John's book to get a clear picture of it. Instead, here they are, on the coast, house behind, sea in front, stretching out like an ocean of possibilities.

John still wants to adopt. Scott's coming around to that.

"It's one of those harmless lies, isn't it?" he asks suddenly, because the silence is deafening. John index finger runs over his palm, and he smiles, and they're on the West End again.

"Life is made of those lies, is what I've learnt," he says softly. He glances at the ground. "Sonofabitch." He bends at the waist so that Scott gets a fantastic (fantastic fantastic) view of his arse and scoops his slipper off the rocks. "Look at that. Anyway, little lies that never hurt anything. Brutal honesty is called that for a reason." And then he shrugs. "I read that in a fortune cookie."

Scott raises an eyebrow. "Oh really?"

John stands and pulls Scott with him, feet in a squelchy bunch of seaweed. "I might have added 'in bed' to the end of it."

"Ah, yes, sex is a horrible time for brutal honesty," Scott agrees.

They crawl back up the slope to the path, jump the stone barrier and shoo the dogs back inside with their shoe booty. Scott fishes out John's pool shoe and examines it. It's pretty wasted and will pass for being well worn if he takes a knife to the stuffing on the top. John watches Harris rattle the slipper in his mouth before shaking his head and falling back onto the sofa and its throw pillows.

"Hey," he says suddenly, and Scott stops his examination of the slipper in his hand to glance up. John's face is creased with worry. "You know I don't lie to you, right?"

Scott smiles. "Brutal honesty?"

John reaches for the abandoned bag of prawn crisps and deposits it on his chest while kicking his feet up on the coffee table. "Always." He sighs. "I'm going to eat this whole bag."

Scott stares at him for a moment, there on the sofa with his glasses, Clark Kent, gay Kansas farm boy from Glasgow, Superman, really, under it all, saving the world, saving Scott's world occasionally.

Plus he can _work it_ in heels.

Scott likes to think that he saves John's world sometimes, too, but in different ways. Maybe identical ways, ways that he can't measure because he lives his life on the inside, and they don't read the gossip rags anymore.

"Well, if we're being brutally honest with each other," he starts, falling next to John on the sofa and tossing one leg over John's. "I should tell you that I hate prawn crisps."

John clutches the bag and laughs. "Then more for me."

Yeah, that's the way it is sometimes. Little lies.

***

 _Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young.  
Although she knows my days are past the best,  
Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:  
On both side thus is simple truth suppress'd:  
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?  
And wherefore say not I that I am old?  
O! love's best habit is in seeming trust,  
And age in love loves not to have years told._

END


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